Middle-earth Journeys

For those of you that are fed up with me rattling on about it, I have finally finished the essay I've been mentioning for about two years now:

“Freedom from Time and clinging to Time”: Death in The Lord of the Rings

You will find it here in our Members' Essays Forum.

On September 19, 1931, C. S. Lewis invited J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson to dinner at Magdalen College and after dinner they went for a walk. But not just a walk. Their talk that night was seminal, particularly for Lewis, who later cited that conversation as an important turning point in his conversion to Christianity. Their topic that night was the nature of myth. Lewis thought at the time that ‘myth’ was synonymous with ‘lie’ although, since he enjoyed mythology, he added that a myth was a lie “breathed through silver”. Tolkien contended that myths do not necessarily have to be false, that they still can function in the way myths do, even if they are true.

During the next several days, Tolkien composed the first version of the poem “Mythopoeia”, the title of which is a coined word from the Greek meaning ‘myth-making’. It is dedicated “To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver’” and it is subtitled “Philomythus [myth-lover] to Misomythus [myth-hater]”. As far as I know, the only place where the poem is published legally is in the third edition of a short collection entitled Tree and Leaf (Harper Collins, 1988). (It may also be found on the ‘net—enough said!)

In the preface to this collection, Christopher Tolkien wrote that “Mythopoeia” is so closely related to part of the essay “On Fairy-Stories” that his father quoted fourteen lines from the poem in the essay. Both texts defend myth-making as not lying, obviously: at the time it was written, Tolkien was well immersed in the writing of his mythology and so the essay and the poem are something of a self-defense. But in the process, Tolkien reveals some deep truths about life, the world, and creativity.


Please join us for a discussion of “Mythopoiea” in the Tolkien Poetry thread.

© Images: David Wyatt/Iolanthe/marbretherese/Riv Res

We'd also like to announce to our members, old and new, that we have done a bit of redecorating for the Open House! We have replaced some of the pictures in the introductions to some of the threads with works of art from our own in-house artists, Iolanthe, marbretherese, and Riv Res. I think they look stunning in their new settings: it's almost like finding new editions of our favorite works by the Professor with perfect illustrations by our friends!

So take a look at some of the first pages, particularly of the LOTR chapter discussion threads, to check out our new look!

© Festival in the Shire TM